Rubik's Cube Brain Teaser Puzzle with Helpful Hints

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BRIEF HISTORY OF THE CUBE

Every invention has an official birth date. For the Cube this date is 1974 when the first working prototype came into being and a patent application was drafted. The place was Budapest, the capital of Hungary. The inventor's name is now a household word. At the time, Erno Rubik was a lecturer in the Department of Interior Design at the Academy of Applied Arts and Crafts in Budapest.

Although 1974 marks the inauguration of the Cube, the processes that led to the invention began a few years earlier, nor was the identity of the inventor a fortuitous accident. Erno Rubik had a passionate interest in geometry, in the study of 3D forms, in construction and in exploring the hidden possibilities of combinations of forms and material in theory and in practice.

In the course of his teaching, Erno Rubik preferred to communicate his ideas by the use of actual models, made from paper, cardboard, wood or plastic, challenging his students to experiment by manipulating clearly constructed and easily interpreted forms. It was the realization that even the simplest elements, cleverly duplicated and manipulated, yield an abundance of multiple forms that was the first step on the long road that led finally to the Cube. . Erno had applied for a Hungarian patent for the Magic Cube in 1975, the first test batches were notproduced until late 1977.

Although possibly the most original of all invented puzzles, the Cube was not created in a vacuum. Its classical antecedents are great puzzles in their own right. The Tangram, originating from ancient China, merely consists of 5 triangles, a square and a parallelogram, simple elements that yield a multitude of interesting figures. The Pentomino, invented by Solomon W Golomb, has 12 different elements, each one made up of five squares joined together, displaying all the possible configurations of the five combined squares. Pentomino poses the fascinating geometric problem

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